


press restart

by Acavall



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: CLAP Era, Canon Compliant, Canon Universe, Insomnia, M/M, comeback anxiety, john mulaney?, soft boys deserve soft fics, some memeing going on im so sorry but its seokmin, this is post-midnight fluff of the highest order
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-29
Updated: 2017-12-29
Packaged: 2019-02-23 13:31:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13191135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Acavall/pseuds/Acavall
Summary: A week before comeback, Seokmin can't sleep. But with Hong Jisoo's 2am company and a jukebox playing Tom Jones, he might just be ok.





	press restart

**Author's Note:**

> Happy birthday to Jisoo! I honestly never thought the first ship I wrote for Seokmin would be Seoksoo but they're just too soft together and it made me angry and listen we're all here now so let's just make peace with it.

It’s midnight and Seokmin’s ramen is getting cold.

He’s cross legged on the floor with his back against the couch and there’s a sports anime of some kind playing on the TV that Seungkwan left running when he went to answer a call from his mother. Seokmin is only half watching it.

The other half of his mind is working overtime trying and failing not to listen to the unbelievably stupid conversation Mingyu and Wonwoo are having across the room about whether or not penguins can fly.

“Of course they can’t,” Wonwoo is insisting, his fist clenched into a ball on the dining table in a way that gives off the tell tale signs that he’s nearing his limit. “Mingyu. Did you even go to school? Have you ever seen a penguin?”

“Not in real life, that’s my point,” Mingyu says calmly, a total brick wall in the face of Wonwoo’s stirring rage, but Seokmin notices his lip twitch slightly. Seokmin, along with everyone else in the group, knows that’s the tell tale sign that Mingyu is aware he is wrong, but has gone too far down one path to admit it. Wonwoo would know that if he had any presence of mind left, but he’s lost to his own rage.

Honestly, these kinds of conversations are common around comeback time. Everyone is on edge, no one is sleeping, they've just gotten home from 16 hours straight of dance practice, and they’re all so drenched in their own insecurity and doubt that it becomes possible for an otherwise intelligent human being to forget what penguins are and then refuse to admit his error.

“This was entertaining for about ten minutes,” a soft voice says in Seokmin’s ear, and he feels the couch depress behind him as he smells a familiar scent – cotton, he thinks, but also something sweeter. “But I’m wondering if someone shouldn’t step in.”

“That doesn’t sound like you’re volunteering,” Seokmin replies quietly, tilting his chin up so he can see where Jisoo is now perched on the couch behind him.

“Me? No,” Jisoo says with a slight smirk. “I think they kind of deserve to be trapped in this weird form of hell.”

“But we don’t deserve to be trapped with them,” Seokmin whines, his head falling back against Jisoo’s knees. He feels one of Jisoo’s hands begin to thread fingers through his hair, and a shiver runs over his skin. He’s a bit like a cat – the minute anyone starts patting him, his mind becomes jelly. But Jisoo has always had the strongest effect on him. The second Jisoo starts touching him, the rest of the world with its anime theme music and Wonwoo’s borderline shaking voice demanding _“THEN TELL ME WHAT COLOUR YOU THINK PENGUINS ARE MINGYU”_ just blurs and fades.

“You want me to get Seungcheol?” Jisoo asks, and Seokmin shakes his head, but just barely, careful not to shake off Jisoo’s hand.

“He’s asleep.” It’s unspoken, the rest of his thought, but understood. _And he really, really needs it._

They all do.

*

Later, when it’s 2am and Seokmin is lying amongst their bunk bed jungle with his eyes wide open, he can’t say he’s surprised.

This is the third night in a row he hasn’t been able to sleep, and he’s not about to spend it the same as the other two, just staring at the wall until the sun peers through the curtains and pulls him to his feet.

This time, he gets up, shrugs on some comfy pants and a jumper and finds his coat, and he’s out the door as quickly and quietly as he can.

Below their apartment building, just one door over, is a little American-themed diner. He’s been there for hamburgers with Jisoo a thousand times, loves it for it’s faded red vinyl seats, not to mention the battered old jukebox in the corner. When they were in LA Jisoo and Vernon had taken him to a diner that looked just like it, and he basically screamed so loudly about getting the authentic American experience that they nearly got thrown out. Worth it though. Hashtag no ragrets.

He throws his bag down into a booth and asks a passing waitress for coffee before heading straight for the jukebox. Once he hears the clunk of his coins hitting the bottom of the pile, he scans down the list, brain whirring as he parses the English letters until he finds what he’s looking for.

When he returns to his booth, his coffee has already been served. He slips into the seat, and fishes out his phone, looking for the webtoon he’s been reading when-

“You really need to check your phone settings,” a soft voice mutters, and then a familiar cotton scent hits Seokmin and he looks up to find Jisoo settling into the booth opposite him.

“My what?” Seokmin asks, thrown for a loop. He hadn’t been expecting any kind of company, let alone Jisoo.

Jisoo slides his own phone across the table, gesturing for Seokmin to look. Seokmin sees it’s open to the Find A Friend app, signalling his location at this diner.

“Don’t you young people care about privacy?” Jisoo asks, his lilting voice a mockery of an old man.

Seokmin replies in his grandpa voice, “Young people? I don’t see any young people here.”

Jisoo can’t help but laugh at that, and then a waiter interrupts them and he orders a hot chocolate, clearly planning on staying. So that’s something.

“What are you doing here Shua?” Seokmin asks when the waiter is done, curious given the time of night – or morning really – but Jisoo just shrugs.

“Saw you leave. Can’t sleep either.”

Seokmin frowns at him, concern snaking through his brain. “You need sleep, hyung.”

“You can talk.” Jisoo shakes his head. “It’s fine. After this week it’ll all be done and I’ll stop feeling like throwing up every five seconds.”

Seokmin sighs, stirring his coffee. “I know what you mean. Every comeback I think will be easier than the last, I’ll be more confident, less terrified we’re about to fail. But it never feels that way.”

He feels Jisoo’s leg press against his own, a comforting feeling.

It reminds him of filming in the tunnel for the Pinwheel clip, just him and Jisoo on that cold tile ground. There’d been a five minute turn around time when the crew had had to change the memory card on the camera, and Jisoo had come to sit beside him for warmth. It took perhaps only twenty seconds, but when Seokmin had gone to crack a joke he’d realised that Jisoo was fast asleep against his shoulder, leg pressed alongside Seokmin’s own, his whole body leaning fully on Seokmin.

That was the first time Seokmin had ever really thought to question what exactly that feeling was, that feeling he got whenever Jisoo touched him. Warm, scared, kind of blurry and fizzing at the same time. It had raced through him in that cold tunnel, background music to the feel of Jisoo’s tiny frame against his own and the soft sound of Jisoo’s breath so even.

‘ _Oh_ ,’ he’d finally thought, once he’d given it a second’s worth of consideration and reached the stunningly obvious conclusion. ‘ _Ah._ ’

The sound of a horn shocks him from his thoughts, and he realises the song he’d cued in the jukebox machine has come up. He catches Jisoo’s confused expression with a benign smile, careful not to betray any particular feelings about what’s just come over the speakers.

“I never expect to hear Tom Jones playing in Korea,” Jisoo shrugs, and then his hot chocolate arrives and he seems to put that thought to one side.

Seokmin wonders what Jisoo will say when the song ends and immediately starts back up again. He only has two minutes until that question gets answered.

Jisoo is humming along now, almost absently, into his mug. Seokmin watches him wrap his two sweater paws around the mug, his delicate frame drowning in a jumper that judging by its size must belong to Mingyu, and his heart feels full to bursting. There’s something so soft about Jisoo, so bright and so breakable. Seokmin is long and lanky, and he always wants to curl his errant limbs over and around Jisoo like human bubble wrap.

“Hey,” Jisoo says all of a sudden, and Seokmin realises they’ve been looking at each other for the better part of ten seconds, which is decidedly long when no one is saying anything. “Remember when you shaved your eyebrow?”

“The slits?” Seokmin laughs, snorting coffee into the cup mid-sip. “Why?”

“It was a good look,” Jisoo grins at him. “That’s all. Was just thinking back to then. We were very new.”

“We were,” Seokmin agrees, and then for some unknown reason he adds, “I like your hair like this now. You look like a flower.”

Jisoo laughs his tiny laugh, his eyes crescent moons, and Seokmin feels his heart jump stupidly.

“ _Cause you’re my flower,”_ Jisoo sings, smiling brightly. Seokmin feels his expression respond automatically, an instant mirror.

“This might be as dumb as the penguin conversation,” Seokmin tells him, his smile turning to a stifled yawn. “We sound like idiots.”

He misses sleep. His eyes hurt. His brain hurts. His whole body hurts.

“Not long now,” Jisoo murmurs, voice low and almost solemn. Seokmin laughs, because that’s his default setting, and because everything seems funny when you haven't closed your eyes in close to 72 hours.

“That sounds ominous.”

“Does it? Sorry,” Jisoo sighs. “I feel like a black cloud.”

“Just like all the rest of us,” Seokmin assures him. “Seungkwan’s been on the phone to his mother four times a day. Hansol started building a sculpture out of used toilet rolls. I saw Jun crying at a radio ad this morning. I swear, everyone is handling the stress about as well as everyone else.”

The final chords play, and there’s a second of silence, two, and then the horn and Tom Jones is asking ‘What’s New Pussycat’ all over again all of a sudden. But to Seokmin’s interest, Jisoo doesn’t even seem to notice. He’s saying something, Seokmin realises, and Seokmin wasn’t listening, too busy waiting for a reaction that didn’t come.

“…tried it, but I swear he’s lying,” Jisoo laments, his smile fading to thoughtfulness. “Meditation, tea, baths, white noise machine, glass of milk, glass of wine. None of it works. Not for me, anyway.”

“I’m in the same boat, I think,” Seokmin sighs, effortlessly picking up what Jisoo is talking about. “When I was younger and I couldn’t sleep, my mother would stroke my hair and sing. Worked so well, up til I was about twelve.”

“Why twelve?”

“Well, you grow up around then,” Seokmin shrugs. “I think the way you see your mother changes, you know? And it’s not really the act of being comforted, it’s who is comforting you that matters.”

“You mean you’re not about to get Jeonghan to come stroke your hair for you?”

“Maybe if he puts on that apron,” Seokmin giggles, thinking of the apron hanging in the kitchen that they’d found Mingyu for his birthday. It’s pink and covered in tiny white cartoon ducks, and Mingyu is weirdly attached to it.

“It’s just,” Seokmin adds, wanting to explain himself better, “You get older, your mother stops seeming like this invincible hero who will protect you from all harm. She becomes more…”

“Human,” Jisoo replies as Seokmin trails off, wheel turning as he searches for a word Jisoo has immediately to hand. Seokmin nods.

“Yeah. Human. So you get a new kind of relationship with her, where you’re both a bit more honest, and bit more open, and that’s pretty great too. But that protection magic kind of wears off.”

Jisoo is quiet as he thinks about this, and as the strains of ‘What’s New Pussycat’ fade, and a second passes, Seokmin fights a smile. The horns blare. Tom Jones rockets back into song.

“That’s weird,” Jisoo frowns, as though he’s talking to his drink more than to Seokmin. “Is that two ‘What’s New Pussycat’s in a row?”

 _Three_ , Seokmin thinks, but he doesn’t say it.

“They must have accidentally pressed it twice,” Seokmin offers, and Jisoo seems to accept this, though his expression remains slightly puzzled.

Seokmin is suddenly somewhat grateful that Jisoo doesn’t spend all his time watching youtube videos, or he might already be aware of what’s going on. Mingyu would have worked it out two seconds into the second playing. Hansol would have worked it out two seconds into the first playing. Soonyoung probably would have beaten Seokmin to the idea.

That’s something Seokmin kind of loves about Jisoo. He’s smart, but he has these insane gaps in his knowledge of pop culture. Mostly internet related. For someone their age, that’s just kind of weird. Jisoo is certified weird. Just not in a way anyone ever expects.

“So you think once your mom becomes a real person in your eyes, that’s it?” Jisoo says now, seemingly dismissing the insistent strains of Tom Jones from his mind for the time being. “No one will ever be able to help you sleep again?”

Seokmin swallows a mouthful of coffee. “Not unless they make you feel safe the same way.”

“Maybe a lover might,” Jisoo says, and Seokmin shrugs as nonchalantly as he possible can given the sudden wave of nerves that washes through him as Jisoo hits so, so close to the truth.

“I imagine so, I mean, what would I know?” Seokmin laughs, too loud for this diner, too off, it sounds a little bit harsh even to his own ears. He is suddenly forced by his errant mind to consider falling asleep in Jisoo's arms, Jisoo's fingers crading his hair, how safe that might feel, how sturdy. 

He falls silent, not trusting himself to speak without saying something embarrassingly weird. Instead he looks for the first time at who is in the diner with them. There’s a woman asleep on the table the next booth over. A businessman towards the back with a newspaper eating bacon and eggs like this is his regular breakfast time. And Jisoo, of course, who is watching him with interest.

“What,” Seokmin asks, and Jisoo shakes his head. Seokmin pouts. “No, why are you staring?”

“Nothing,” he replies, taking a sip of his drink and purposefully looking away. “You’re just interesting.”

“Am I?” Seokmin laughs, and Jisoo still isn’t looking at him. His gaze is lingering on the sleeping woman with what appears to be mild concern.

“Yeah, you just…” Jisoo traces one finger round and round the rim of his coffee mug. “Anyone ever told you you get people well?”

“Thanks,” Seokmin says as cheerfully as he can manage, even though he can feel his heart beating so hard it must be echoing in his throat for all the diner to hear.

Silence.

Horns.

 _‘What’s new pussycat?’_ Tom Jones asks once again.

And now Jisoo is staring at Seokmin with a strange mixture of confusion and exasperation, and Seokmin can’t fight the slightly deranged grin slowly spreading over his features.

“Seokmin,” Jisoo asks slowly, fingers steepled against his chin. “Why do I feel like you’re responsible for the third round of ‘What’s New Pussycat’ currently blasting through the speaker system?”

“Fourth, actually.”

“Really?”

Seokmin nods. He can’t dull his smile. “Salt and Pepper Diner,” he says in explanation. “I wanted to live it myself.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Jisoo replies with a very earnest kind of resignation, and Seokmin shrugs. The sleeping woman is still sleeping, the business man still reading his paper. No one else seems to have noticed.

“Just youtube it when we get back,” Seokmin says, because if there’s one thing he’s not about to ruin by attempting to explain, it’s the Salt and Pepper Diner.

“How many times is this song going to come around?”

“It’s meant to be twenty-one, but I only brought enough coins for twelve.”

Jisoo blinks at Seokmin. “We’re about to listen to this song another eight times?”

“I would say so, yes,” Seokmin replies. “Unless you’re done with your hot chocolate.”

Jisoo grabs his mug and downs the final few gulps, and then fixes Seokmin with a wide-eyed stare. “I’m done with my hot chocolate, Seokmin.”

“Ok, ok,” Seokmin grins, rising from his seat. “Let’s go hyung.”

They spill onto the street before Seokmin has finished shrugging on his coat, and the cold night air bites at him as he hurries to get it over his wide shoulders.

“You want to go back to the dorm?” Jisoo asks.

“Mm. No. Not yet.” Seokmin holds out his hand. “A walk?”

Jisoo looks at the outstretched hand for a second, expressionless, and then he laces his fingers with Seokmin’s.

“I’ve got the studio key,” Jisoo says, as their steps fall into sync, and Seokmin looks sideways at him.

“You want to practice?”

Jisoo shakes his head. “No, I just. Feel safe there.”

Seokmin knows what he means.

It’s not a long walk to the studio, but the cold night air is bracing, and it might be the only thing keeping Seokmin upright now he's on his feet again. He feels the weight of three sleepless nights and days filled with practice heavy on his shoulders like a second overcoat, but winter slaps at his face, keeps him moving.

“Maybe we can V Live it,” Seokmin suggests jokingly, and Jisoo grins at him.

“You think anyone’s up at“ - he checks his watch – “two-fifty in the morning, woah.”

“What time is it back in LA?” Seokmin asks, and Jisoo does some mental math.

“Morning,” he finally says. “My family would be up.”

“You want to call them?”

Jisoo is silent for a moment.

“Not really,” he says softly. “Not right now, when I’m, like…” He flounders, but Seokmin knows what he’s aiming for.

“This version of yourself?” Seokmin suggests, looking at how pale Jisoo's skin is right now, how wan his smile, and Jisoo nods.

“Yeah.” He glances at Seokmin. “You always see me, Deokyommie.”

“Is that good?” Seokmin asks, and Jisoo smiles at him, a real, true smile.

“It is,” Jisoo tells him, and Seokmin beams, feeling a little bit proud. Seokmin would never call himself a quiet person, but the connection he has with Jisoo is. It’s something soft but solid, built on mutual trust and almost wordless understanding. Ever since vocal team really clicked, some time right before debut, he’s been someone Jisoo has chosen as an escape from when the world gets loud.

Which makes almost no sense to him, when he thinks about himself.

“Jisoo,” he says now, suddenly overly aware of Jisoo’s fingers linked with his own. “Aren’t I loud?”

“You are,” Jisoo agrees immediately, completely deadpan, and Seokmin bursts with sudden laughter.

“You didn’t even wait for context,” Seokmin whines, and Jisoo raises his eyebrows.

“There’s context?”

Seokmin smiles at him. He likes the way Jisoo pokes fun, especially with him. “There’s context. When we’re together, I’m not too loud for you?”

Jisoo glances at him quickly, then away, almost as though he hopes Seokmin won’t notice, and Seokmin knows he’s being sized up. Knows that’s Jisoo reading the temperature of the exchange. He does that, always thinking, scanning, some kind of calculation happening in his brain that no one else is ever privy too. It’s sly in a way, but Seokmin is certain it comes from not wanting to hurt people. It’s Jisoo making sure he knows exactly how much room there is for joking, exactly how serious a question is, how much honesty is being asked for, before he answers.

Whatever Jisoo saw prompts him to give Seokmin’s hand a quick squeeze.

“Why are you worrying about that right now?” is Jisoo’s response, and Seokmin frowns.

“That’s not a no,” he says, and Jisoo sighs, bumping into Seokmin's side on purpose. Comfort, or admonishment, Seokmin isn't totally sure.

“Seokmin, sometimes people need to be told something by someone else, other times they need to be told it by themselves. I’m not going to answer your question because I’m pretty sure this is the second one.”

“Is it?” Seokmin half-laughs, always surprised when Jisoo won’t play along with his neediness, though maybe by now he shouldn’t be. Jisoo nods.

“You can answer your own question, dummy.”

Seokmin thinks.

He thinks about the days when Jisoo is in a joking mood, when his lines come around in practice but he spits them out in rap, and it’s always Seokmin he makes eye contact with as though he knows exactly who he wants to be in on a joke with.

He thinks about the days when Jisoo is too tired to keep up with the rest of the vocal team’s squawking and yelling and wailing, and how when he gets like that it’s always Seokmin he comes and curls up against, even when Seokmin is doing half the yelling himself.

He thinks about when they’re waiting to perform on stage, and everyone’s getting ready but Seokmin is still belting out his notes in the store room so he doesn’t bother everyone else (though he knows they can hear him anyway), and it’s usually Jisoo who brings him cup noodles and waits for him to finish so he can make sure Seokmin’s eaten.

He thinks about getting up in the middle of the night to go to a diner, and Jisoo literally tracking his phone to come and spend a sleepless night with him.

Yeah, ok, he knows the answer to his dumb question.

“Seokmin?” Jisoo’s voice pulls him from his thoughts.

“Mm?”

“I can feel your heart pounding through your wrist,” Jisoo says quietly, words almost a mumble. _Oh._ Seokmin feels suddenly as though he’s turned see-through. Like he’s a glass man, with a glass heart, always just too visible to hide.

He chances a sideways glance at Jisoo, and finds two eyes staring at his own. He can’t hold Jisoo’s questioning gaze, drops it immediately.

“Yeah?” Seokmin says, because he honestly has no better alternative coming to mind.

“Yeah,” Jisoo replies, and then after a second, almost an afterthought – “Oh, we’re here.”

They stumble up the stairs in silence, hands by their own sides now, and Seokmin keeps waiting for Jisoo to say something, but he doesn’t. He just walks silently into the vocal team’s usual practice room and makes a beeline for his guitar, folding himself beneath it on the couch.

Seokmin comes to sit beside him, gingerly, not daring to relax. He’s silent as Jisoo picks out a few notes on the strings beneath his fingers, and Seokmin realises its Pinwheel. It must have been on both their minds.

“Seokmin?” Jisoo suddenly says, and Seokmin feels himself freeze.

“Mmmm?”

“Do I make you nervous?”

Seokmin nearly chokes. His instinct is to stand without a word and turn and walk away, down the hall, out the building, down the street and into the river. But he can’t because all parts of that scenario are way too weird. So he swallows, and says, “Sometimes.”

“Why me?”

“Why do you make me nervous? Do you really need to ask that?” Seokmin says, and Jisoo shakes his head.

“No, I get what you’re implying, it’s just - me?” He really has dark circles under his eyes. Seokmin wants to reach out and wipe them away.

“Of course you,” Seokmin half laughs, staring incredulously at Jisoo. This conversation feels like a dream. Maybe he did fall asleep after all, back at the diner. Maybe any second now a waitress is going to come and wake him up. He’s not sure if that would be a relief or completely terrible.

“Not someone else?” Jisoo asks, and his eyes are so round right now, and Seokmin realises he might be the one making Jisoo nervous this time. Not a dream. This is very much not a dream.

“No one else,” Seokmin tells him honestly, because he's too exhausted to think of a way out of this. He has nowhere to go from here except straight through.

“Since when?

“Since that day in the tunnel, maybe. But also longer.”

“Why me?” Jisoo says again, and he looks kind of small and breakable for a second, and Seokmin wonders how to fix that. Wonders if he even can fix that, or if that’s not really his thing to fix. There’s something bigger behind that question, and it might not be Seokmin that has the answers.

He thinks back to their earlier conversation, decides to chance one option. “You can answer your own question, dummy.”

“Seokmin,” Jisoo groans, like he’s in pain, and maybe he is. _Sometimes people need to be told something by someone else, other times they need to be told it by themselves._ Well, if it’s not one…

“You seem like you’re having trouble believing me,” Seokmin says slowly, and Jisoo nods.

“I am.”

Seokmin gets that. He knows Jisoo sometimes sees himself as replaceable. He knows Jisoo sometimes feels forgotten. He gets insecure about his voice too, which Seokmin thinks is insane, because has Jisoo ever heard himself before? He sounds like starlight.

“Hmm,” Seokmin muses. “You remember the first time we prepared a duet together?”

Jisoo nods. “Only Think Of You,” he says.

The idea was ages old, from their trainee days, but it had taken them literal years to finish it because they were always getting pulled onto other projects more demanding of their attention. But every now and then they’d get a quiet moment, Jisoo sitting beneath his guitar, and without a question, without even making eye contact, he’d start strumming the chords, and they’d fall back into the song together like it hadn’t been five days or two weeks or three months since the last time.

“You never complained that it took us so long. You never said we wouldn’t ever get the chance to perform it. Even though you must have felt it. I did. But every time we’d hit a roadblock, once it passed us by, you’d pick up your guitar again and start playing those chords.”

Jisoo shrugs, eyes flicking up to meet Seokmin’s with a soft honesty. “I just wanted to sing with you.”

Seokmin holds his gaze. “And I always _want_ to sing with you. But you made it happen. Because you never stopped trying. You never gave up on the idea. When we were worried we wouldn’t debut. When we did, and it was overwhelming. Every time we went on tour, or prepared a new single. At the end of it all, you’d just sit down and start playing those chords again.”

Jisoo smiles, fingers moving of their own accord over the strings of his guitar now, picking out those first few notes gently, letting them fade into silence.

“What are you telling me, Seokmin?” Jisoo asks, when the last note falls from the air.

“I’m saying that no matter what else is happening, if you pick up your guitar and start singing, everything goes quiet. The whole world could be on fire, and I wouldn’t see it. I wouldn’t hear it. I could be the one on fire,” Seokmin laughs, and he sees mirth spark in Jisoo’s eyes too, though his focused expression doesn’t shift. Seokmin sighs. “Sometimes I feel like I am. Sometimes I feel like we’re in an out of control car racing down a hill towards the trees, and the brakes aren’t working and the engines burning and everyone’s screaming. But the second I see you, or touch you, or hear your voice, it all just… stops. And yeah, sometimes you make me nervous, really just when I think about you finding out how I feel. Which is done now. But mostly, Jisoo, you make me feel calm. You make me feel quiet.”

Jisoo is staring at him now, looking shocked, lost, a little confused. Like he doesn’t know whether to listen, whether to believe what Seokmin is saying.

So Seokmin leans over Jisoo’s guitar, and does the only thing left to try and tell him the truth.

When their lips touch, Seokmin’s heart pounds in his ears, and it’s soft and gentle and hesitant and there’s a second where Jisoo just seems to freeze like a deer in headlights. And Seokmin feels almost ill, because this is about to go one of two ways and he needs an answer, needs something other than silence, and-

And then Seokmin feels Jisoo’s hand on his chin, and Jisoo is kissing him back, still soft but insistent, and Seokmin can feel the way his lips turn up with a smile.

“Seokmin,” Jisoo murmurs against his lips. “You’re beautiful, you know that?”

Seokmin kisses him with everything else left unsaid.

And now that he has an answer, and the uncertainty is gone, Seokmin’s heartbeat seems to slow all of its own accord. He doesn't feel nerves anymore, doesn't feel nausea, can't even remember the crushing exhaustion and constant state of anxiety that's haunted him all week.

When Jisoo kisses him back, Seokmin feels quiet.

He feels hopeful.

He feels like everything is going to be ok.

*

When the morning light spills through the window of the practice room, and Seokmin is jolted to consciousness, he’s aware of noise and movement all around him. He realises he can hear tapping at Jihoon’s laptop, and the shuffling of paper from the table, and the constant thud of a heartbeat beneath his head. The scent of Jisoo is all around him, and so are Jisoo’s arms.

As he lifts his head from Jisoo’s chest, he finds Jisoo watching him with a smile.

“You slept,” Jisoo says, and Seokmin nods blearily.

“Did you?”

“He did,” comes Jihoon’s voice, and Seokmin is suddenly wide awake. He sits bolt upright, pushing on Jisoo in his scramble to get up so that Jisoo sputters and almost chokes.

“Sorry,” Seokmin assures him, before taking in the Jihoon sitting at the laptop now studiously ignoring them, and the Seungcheol at the table with a pen in his mouth, and the Soonyoung currently lounging on the windowsill with a notebook on his knees.

“Glad you finally got some sleep,” Seungcheol says sincerely, glancing at them nonchalantly before returning to whatever it is he’s writing. Lyrics probably.

“Uh,” Seokmin says, and Soonyoung grins at him and gives him the thumbs up. Seokmin pulls a face at him.

“Why didn’t they wake us up?” he hisses at Jisoo, who laughs.

“Seokmin,” Jisoo says from beneath him, still sprawled horizontal on the couch. “It’s only six. The leaders are insane.”

“We are,” Soonyoung agrees, pressing his head to the glass briefly in a dramatic pose. He motions dismissively at the pair on the couch. “So don’t mind us. Carry on, you two.”

“Yes sir,” Seokmin tells him, and he can’t help grinning, and Soonyoung grins back. Then he feels Jisoo’s arm around his neck pulling him down, and he goes willingly, curling into the boy beneath him.

The sound of Jihoon’s tapping, and Soonyoung’s scribbling, and Seungcheol sighing, is weirdly comforting to him. It’s the sound of normalcy, constancy.

But they’re nothing compared to the way Jisoo’s arms wrap around him, the quiet steady thump of Jisoo’s heart, and the gentle hum of Jisoo’s starlight voice in his ear, reminding him of all the days behind them, and the days before them, that they’ll get through together.

 

 


End file.
